Your Cigarette Still Burns {Damon Albarn}

2

Cₕₐₚₜₑᵣ ₂ ~ ₚᵣₑ ₚₑᵣfₒᵣₘₐₙcₑ

30th October 1994
Birmingham, England
Madeline Summers Perspective:

The train ride was uneventful.
It consisted mainly of me flicking through songs on my Walkman, Violet hiding in the cubicle with Lady, Buffy painting her nails, and Juno practising her Swedish.

We got out after half an hour, not wasting any time to just get out of that stuffy train.
I think everyone In the carriage was suffocating from the nail polish fumes, so a breath of fresh air certainly wasn't a bad thing.

"Where's Violet?" I asked, sitting down on the bench next to Juno.
"Lady's probably half way down the toilet." Juno scoffed, holding in her laugh.

"Oh there she is." Buffy pointed towards the train tracks, Violet stumbling over with lady perched in her bag.

"Why are you stumbling mate, it looks like you have a vibrator up your fanny." Buffy sniggered, earning a punch on the shoulder.

"Did you forget that I was in the cubicle the whole ride?" She snapped, petting lady on the head, "anyway, let's get going, I'm not in the mood to have no practice time for maybe the most important day in our career."

We all got up and followed her lead, "wait we can actually practice beforehand?" Juno asked, speeding up to my side.

"I know I may seem it, but I'm not completely dense. We have a few hours to practice before the show in the arena whilst the bigger bands chat in the lobby and gossip about the shitty little bands like us." She said in disgust, crossing the street abruptly.

She always crossed the streets like she had a death wish. "Oh booger off!" She hollered at a honking white beetle.

The train station was more or less a few roads a way from the O2 Academy, meaning that Violet wasn't lying for once when she said that we'd have a few hours rehearsal time.

"Am I the only one feeling fucking terrified." I muttered.
Juno placed her hand on mine, squeezing it tightly, "I'm shitting myself too."

We both laughed, walking down to the entrance.
"I need and ID from all of you and your band name." The bodyguard pushed out his chest, raising a brow.

"Our band is called Sixteen." Buffy said once she handed him our collected ID's.

He eyed all of us up, his eyes flickering to the ID's every now and then.
He tapped in to his Wally talky, "is Sixteen on the list?"

"Send them through."

"Alright girls, go through these doors and you'll be in the lobby where my co worker will show you to your practice room." He licked his lips, carrying on, "a few ground rules first. When you enter the lobby, don't talk to any of the bands in there since we are trying to avoid any sort of bias or favouritism. Number 2, don't come out of your practice room until you're called to the stage at your designated time or if you need the toilet to once again avoid bias. Last rule is no smoking unless it's outside."

He gestured for us to go through the doors, smiling inwardly at us all.

In other words, he said, don't leave your practice room, don't talk to anyone aside from your friends and don't smoke.
So we had no freedom whatsoever.